"Everything has a cause and an explanation" discussion.

[GrandizerII]

There would be no property to stop properties from just happening.

Agreed. But again, it would also have no property to allow properties to just happen.

I don't see what's so difficult to understand about this.

[Neo-Scholastic]

How do you get from the existence of a rudimentary existing substance to classical THeism? That's kind of a big jump, don't you think? How do you know that this basic "stuff" takes a personal interest in the lives of a specific group of primates on planet earth? Classic theism?...

Additional philosophical inquiry, dealing with final cause and purpose, is needed to demonstrate the divine intellect. The argument under discussion is just part of the necessary ground work to get there. It must first be granted that beings that are subject to change are contingent upon something more fundamental that cannot in principle change. To me that conclusion is inescapable for an intelligible reality. To assert the opposite is to undermine the very foundation of the scientific enterprise.

As a supplement the discussion about nothing, the original concern revolved around the tension between being and change, i.e Paracelsus versus Heraclitus. In that context, 'nothing' is the state of non-being which by definition cannot exist.

[bennyboy]

The capacity for something to arise is something. So is the capacity for that capacity.

There's really no way around it-- reality is an illogical brain-fuck. Those who say, "Aha! Now I've got it, and it totally makes sense!" are full of shit.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Additional philosophical inquiry, dealing with final cause and purpose, is needed to demonstrate the divine intellect.

I'm not sure philosophical inquiry is going to lead to A final cause regarding the universe. I assume you're referring to Aristotle's Final Cause? For the 4 cause model to be accurate in describing causality, I can't think of a demonstrable instance that doesn't require the knowing first what the inspiration or utility of an object is before applying the 4 cause model to it. Otherwise, how could you know that you are not imposing purpose on potentially purposeless things? Aristotle's four causes describe causality accurately only in retrospect to things such as tables and vases because the final cause was the inspirational purpose for their creation, and in some sense, the final cause was the first step before any other cause was required. We needed something to hold flowers, so we gathered the materials we needed, gave them shape, and created a vase-all 4 causes fit. But how can you demonstrate that this is a reliable formula to understanding the universe? It's true that the flowers and vases share in common some of Aristotle's causes, it doesn't follow that they too MUST fit into the entire 4 cause model. Because when it comes to things we did not create ourselves, there is no basis to reasonably assume they were the result of any requirement out of utility or creative inspiration. I think it's a mistake to assume that because we are capable of utilizing things we did not create, then it is true that the things we did not create must be created for us to use.

The argument under discussion is just part of the necessary ground work to get there. It must first be granted that beings that are subject to change are contingent upon something more fundamental that cannot in principle change.

I would grant that all things are contingent upon something fundamental that cannot be reduced beyond it's fundamental state. I do not know that I can grant that this fundamental stuff is incapable of change. If all material is simply complex configurations of this fundamental stuff, then whatever this stuff is, in its most simple form, is clearly capable of change even if the only change is the process by which it is rearranged into the diverse composition of all things, and I don't see how it's required to say that this is stuff is what the universe in comprised of, and we do not yet understand exactly how that works.[/quote]

To me that conclusion is inescapable for an intelligible reality. To assert the opposite is to undermine the very foundation of the scientific enterprise.

I definitely wouldn't assert the opposite as I don't have all the information. And I agree that asserting things without all of the information is undermining to science, and to go a step further, is NOT science to be certain of things that cannot be known for certain.

[Pyrrho]

I would not go as far as that, but until a reason is given to think that everything does have a cause, and everything does have an explanation, there is no reason to believe that everything has a cause, and everything has an explanation. With an absence of evidence, the most sensible position is to withhold judgement, and neither affirm that they are true, nor that they are false. And as others have observed, the questions themselves are less than perfectly clear, so it is entirely possible that we could be led in different directions with different interpretations.

I rather doubt we are going to see any proof of either proposition appearing in this thread any time soon.

I think we can. I provided logical proof that not everything has a cause or a beginning in another thread. What's nice about it is it's pretty intuitive.

Pretty much goes like this:

Out of nothing, nothing arises.

Prove it. The fact that people generally believe that that is the way the world works is irrelevant. They may be mistaken. What we typically observe are correlations (Hume's "constant conjunctions"), and suppose that they are causes. And as some people are fond of saying, a correlation is not a cause. One may say, even if the correlation is coincidentally constant.

Even setting that aside, and imagining that normal things cause other things, that does nothing to prove that nothing cannot cause something, or, what would appear to be the same thing, something spontaneously coming to be without some external cause.

The "out of nothing, nothing arises" is an assumption people make, not something that they prove. I am not presently willing to grant you such an assumption.

But we know that nothingness does not exist as we have this reality existing. This means all things that exist either arose from something or have always been. Allowing only the possibility that all things come from something fails to acknowledge that at some point "back" in "time" (whatever "time" is), there must have been some eternal stuff leading to this reality. So we should accept that there are stuff that have always been (i.e. without any causes or beginnings).

Now what this thing may be could be anything. And that's where I believe we should withhold judgement about what this whole thing is until sufficient relevant information is revealed.

If I understand your meaning, you seem to reject the possibility of an infinite regress, that everything cannot have a prior cause, that the universe cannot simply have always existed (where "the universe" is understood to be the collection of all that is; a collection of things, not a separate thing). I see no reason to accept that claim.

So that, even if I accept "normal" ideas of causation, everything that exists at any point in time may owe its existence to something else that existed in a prior time. Consequently, there is no reason to accept the idea that anything is eternal; it may all be contingent, caused to be from prior things. There need not be any ultimate "beginning."

In fact, an argument (but short of a proof) can be made for the opposite, for we have no experience of anything being eternal, but everything comes to be, and ceases to be. Why suppose that there ever was a time when the universe was fundamentally different from the way it is now? If we grant the "normal" idea of causation, for all of our lives, for any time t, the cause of t may be found in t - 1, a prior moment in time. Why suppose that that rule does not apply eternally, so that there is no beginning, and no end?

[Pizza]

The capacity for something to arise is something. So is the capacity for that capacity.

There's really no way around it-- reality is an illogical brain-fuck. Those who say, "Aha! Now I've got it, and it totally makes sense!" are full of shit.

Okay, that makes more sense. That's the better way to put it.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Out of nothing, nothing arises.

[edit: Crap, I think I'm targeting the wrong person, who's arguing creation ex-nihilo here?]

Just for fun, I'll grant you this "nothing". What say you now? I am all too curious to tease this out! Gimme your next premise.

[Pizza]

It must first be granted that beings that are subject to change are contingent upon something more fundamental that cannot in principle change. To me that conclusion is inescapable for an intelligible reality.

Minds change; so, it is unlikely a mind is the uncaused cause.

[The Reality Salesman01]

It must first be granted that beings that are subject to change are contingent upon something more fundamental that cannot in principle change. To me that conclusion is inescapable for an intelligible reality.

Minds change; so, it is unlikely a mind is the uncaused cause.

Bingo. Even if only from one state without a universe into another one that decided to will on into existence...

[GrandizerII]

Out of nothing, nothing arises.

[edit: Crap, I think I'm targeting the wrong person, who's arguing creation ex-nihilo here?]

Not me. Creation ex-nihilo actually assumes there was this "nothingness" and yet somehow, magically, God has always been in a "parallel" sense. So the theist position has a logical problem in that sense.

All my premises are in the argument I made in the previous page.

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The capacity for something to arise is something. So is the capacity for that capacity.

That's what I'm pretty much saying.